The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1887-02-03
~ en- IAW

Another argument, and probably
the very strongest that could be pro-
dnced, has been brought to bear in IA
yor of death penalty law for the state
OF Kansas. The terrible revenge taken
by mob at Leavenworth on the black
fiend who was the self-confessed author
of the horrible outrage on little thiT-
teen-year-old adopted daughter of F.
81. Starnes of Leavenworth township,
should be warming to allsuch rufians
with similar brutal instincts. Bat
it should also be remembered by our
solons now assembled at the state cap
ital, when the bill to provide for the
death penalty comes up before them
for action.
Society must protect itself from
murderers and assassins in more sat
isfactory way than to hold out as a
penalty for the taking of life, or a
crime of equal or greater degree, the
simple threat of a life sentence to the
penitentiary-a sentence which in
some cases is welcomed as better
fate than freedom and starvation,
which was the only alternative the
Mcmillan murderers claimed they had,
as they would not work
The case of Orth Stein also illus
trates the reasons why a murderer
should be finally disposed of by the
law. In this case Stein murdered a
man in Kansas City, was tried and
convicted, obtained new trial and
was set at liberty He has just killed
another man in a most cowafdly and
brutal manner out west for the insig-
nificant sum of two dollars. Accord
ing to his own story this makes at
least three men whose lives he has
taken.
And yet, in the face of cases like
this, there are people who will argue
that the death penalty should be en-
tirely abolished; that an execution by
the law is simply another form of muir
der, and that one crime is not rectified
by the commission of another.
If these people would only think
that had Orth Stein been treated to a
necktie similar to the one presented
to the black brute in Leavenworth, i'm
mediately after his first muir
der, he would have been for
ever incapacitated from committing
the second and third crime,
we must say that we cannot see how
any very strong argument can be ad-
duced by them as against the old Bib
lical law.
A term in the penitenary has but
few terrors to a hardened criminal, as
compared to death on the gibbet, and
there is always hope while there is life.
How many murderers have been par
doned out of prison before their SEN
fences expired? is question undoubt-
eddy often asked by the many murder
ers now in the Kansas penitentiary
under sentence of death.
But, over and above all other argu-
ments that may be brought to bear on
the minds of our solons at the state
capitol should be the fair fame and
name of our beautiful state, now be-
coming a by-word in the months of
the people of the entire civilized world
as paradise for murderers and state
where Judge Lynch holds as high car
nival as if we were on the extreme
borders of civilization and entirely
withou law of any sort.
And just so long as we have no ade-
quate punishment prescribed by law
for these cold-blooded assassins
and black-hearted rapists, just so long
may Judge Lynch be expected to take
hold of the but-end of the law when
least expected and deal out justice in
short metre.